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Battle of the Sexes

02/01/08

OK, WE ADMIT IT: We couldn't wait to go back to
the well to see how some of our salary survey results
differed for men and women. Here then, some highlights
we gleaned from a few extra swaths we cut
through the initial results based on 1,040 Campus Technology reader respondents, 570 of whom were male,
454 of whom were female. (For general information
about survey sample size, breakdown, and more, please
see our December Salary Survey issue online.) For our purposes
here, and because more respondents were men
than women, we examined the percentage of each gender
responding vis-à-vis its own gender pool, not the
numbers within each gender responding against the
pool as a whole.

Current Annual Base Salary. Not too much of a surprise
here: More women responded at salary levels below
$60K, more men responded at salary levels $60K and
up, with a curious exception in the $75K-$80K range,
where response was almost equal. The largest percentage
of our surveyed females responded in
the $55K-$60K range; the largest percentage of
males surveyed responded in the $100K-$125K
range, although the second most prevalent
ranges for men were $60K-$70K and $70K-
$75K. And at $80K-$200K, women lagged
far behind.

Satisfaction With Overall Compensation.
Men may be more highly compensated, but
that doesn't mean that women (bless their little
hearts) are complaining about it: The
identical percentage of men and women (just
under 49 percent) reported that they are satisfied
with their overall compensation, and nearly the
same percentage of men and women (rounded
to 27 percent) claimed to be dissatisfied with
overall compensation. Who's more dissatisfied?
Men-a scant .5 percent more men than women
reported they are "very" dissatisfied. There's just no
pleasing some people.

Benefits.When it comes to benefits, we noted a
couple of interesting items: Women are almost
five times as likely as men to favor a non-performance-based
bonus plan, while men are more than twice as likely to wish
for a performance-based bonus plan. Also interesting:
Around twice as many men as women reported they value
expense accounts and institutional pension plans. What do
women wish for? More time off. Which brings us to...

Hours Worked per Week. All we can say here is that
beyond a 40-hour work week, men reported they tend to
work a wee bit longer than do women, although the difference
is slight-that is, until our respondents hit the 60-hour-or-more threshold. Above and beyond 60 hours a week, men
reported they're in the lead-by almost 2 percentage points.

Departments Managed. Yet men may be working longer
hours because they oversee more departments, according to
our survey. Beyond overseeing a single
department (38 percent of women, 36 percent
of men), the next largest percentage
of female respondents reported overseeing
two departments (10 percent), while
the next largest percentage of men
reported overseeing five to nine departments
(13.2 percent, vs. 9.5 percent of
women). But then there's the blip that
puts the kibosh on our theory: 4 percent
of both men and women claimed to
be managing 10 departments or more.

From the Business World. More of our
male survey respondents reported that
they hail from the business (non-academic)
environment than do our females surveyed-
and they've lingered in the corporate
world longer, almost all the way
down the line. At 10 years (of nonacademic
experience) or longer, the difference is striking:
16.8 percent of male respondents, for instance,
reported that they worked outside academia for 10-49 years, while only 8.2 percent of our surveyed
females did. This may account for some of the pay differences
reported in our survey, as those from the
business world often step into campus jobs at a higher
starting salary than many promoted from within.

But Who Sits at the President's Table? More
men than women, at least for now. While the
majority of our survey respondents-three-fourths
of both males and females-are still on the outside
looking in, of those who have made it into the president's
cabinet, over 5 percent more are men than women.